George Lucas fortune

Short introduction

George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American film producer, director and screenwriter who was particularly known for his films from the Star Wars saga and the Indiana Jones film series. Due to his commitment and his work, he is considered a luminary of the film industry. He is one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes magazine, and sold his company Lucasfilms to the Walt Disney Company in 2012 for $ 4 billion. According to his own statements, Lucas wants to donate a large part of the proceeds for educational purposes.

Early life

George Lucas was born in the small town of Modesto in California. His parents Dorothy and George Lucas Senior had three other children in addition to George Junior. George Lucas Senior was also the owner of a stationery store and was expecting his son George Junior to inherit and continue it. Since the mother Dorothy was rarely at home due to her professional activity in a hospital, the upbringing of children mostly lay with the father of the family. This placed great emphasis on a strict and conservative upbringing and was always trying to maintain the work ethic of the children.

From an early age, George Lucas Junior was enthusiastic about books such as The Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as comics by Donald Duck and Superman and the stories by Robin Hood. In addition to a strong interest in pop culture, Lucas was also interested in historically relevant backgrounds and also read many biographies.

After moving to a remote ranch house in the 1950s, Lucas attended Thomas Downey High School. There he was known as a mediocre student and began to develop a great interest in motorcycles at that time. He spent many hours screwing on his car in his spare time and had set himself the goal of starting a racing career.

After graduating from a junior college, Lucas enrolled at the University of Southern California film school in Los Angeles. There he made his first contacts in the film industry and published many smaller student film projects, which made him very popular with his lecturers. After graduating from film school, Lucas was granted a six-month stay in a Warner Bros. studio by a Warner Memorial Fellowship. There he met the well-known director Francis Ford Coppola and a close friendship developed between the two.

Career

Lucas was appointed deputy managing director of Zoetrope Studios and released his first feature film THX 1138. In the following years 1973-1974 Lucas wrote his script for the film Star Wars. The basic idea included the classic struggle between good and evil transferred into a futuristic setting. He got a contract from the 20th Century Fox film studio that secured him a budget of $ 3 million. Before the Star Wars script idea, Lucas had made a manuscript for a film called Indiana Jones. The filmic implementation was carried out a few years later in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Lucas was also involved in several other film productions in the following years, as a producer, screenwriter or director.

Career highlights

George Lucas’s undisputed milestone marks the first Star Wars film “Star Wars”. At the time of its release, the film was worth approximately $ 640 million. At the time, it was considered the financially most successful film of all time and could hold this title for a full six years. Star Wars has grossed $ 892 million to date. This box office result was topped by the 1999 film “Star Wars Episode 1”. This grossed a total of over 900 million US dollars worldwide.

Famous quotes

“The Star Wars films are my kids. I loved them, I created them, I’m very intimately involved in them and I sold them to the white slavers. ”
-George Lucas

“You can’t sell newspapers by saying nice things about something, you can only sell newspapers by creating controversies. Critics aren’t creators, they’re destroyers. ”
-George Lucas

Amazing facts

George Lucas never received an Oscar for his works. However, he has made over $ 4.4 billion in total with his Star Wars films. For Star Wars merchandising alone, Lucas even raised over $ 20 billion.